Who framed Bob Hoskins?

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Stefanie Marsh went to meet a cauldron of foul-mouthed rage, but ended up with a bit of a grumpy-wumps

A few years ago, legend has it, a female theatregoer had a bit of an enounter with Bob Hoskins. Finding herself in the seat next to his, she made the mistake of shyly complimenting the actor on some performance or other. And he told her to f*** off. They’d never met and his aggressive, unmistakably unironic rebuff seemed a trifle over the top, even coming from a man famous for playing aggressive, squat psychopaths.

A few months later, a journalist dispatched to interview the testicle on legs — the critic Pauline Kael’s appellation — found him “the rudest, most disagreeable